Night Over Water - Ken Follett [3]
It cleaved the surface, plowing a white furrow in the green, sending twin curves of spray high in the air on either side; and Luther thought of a mallard coming down on a lake with spread wings and folded feet. The hull sank lower, enlarging the sail-shaped curtains of spray that flew up to left and right; then it began to tilt forward. The spray increased as the plane leveled out, submerging more and more of its whale’s belly. Then at last its nose was down. Its speed slowed suddenly, the spray diminished to a wash, and the aircraft sailed the sea like the ship it was, as calmly as if it had never dared to reach for the sky.
Luther realized he had been holding his breath, and let it out in a long relieved sigh. He started humming again.
The plane taxied toward its berth. Luther had disembarked there a week ago. The dock was a specially designed raft with twin piers. In a few minutes, ropes would be attached to stanchions at the front and rear of the plane and it would be winched in, backward, to its parking slot between the piers. Then the privileged passengers would emerge, stepping from the door onto the broad surface of the sea-wing, then onto the raft, and from there up a gangway to dry land.
Luther turned away, then stopped suddenly. Standing at his shoulder was someone he had not seen before: a man of about his own height, dressed in a dark gray suit and a bowler hat, like a clerk on his way to the office. Luther was about to pass on; then he looked again. The face beneath the bowler hat was not that of a clerk. The man had a high forehead, bright blue eyes, a long jaw, and a thin, cruel mouth. He was older than Luther, about forty; but he was broad-shouldered and seemed fit. He looked handsome and dangerous. He stared into Luther’s eyes.
Luther stopped humming.
The man said: “I am Henry Faber.”
“Tom Luther.”
“I have a message for you.”
Luther’s heart skipped a beat. He tried to hide his excitement, and spoke in the same clipped tones as the other man. “Good. Go ahead.”
“The man you’re so interested in will be on this plane on Wednesday when it leaves for New York.”
“You’re sure?”
The man looked hard at Luther and did not answer.
Luther nodded grimly. So the job was on. At least the suspense was over. “Thank you,” he said.
“There’s more.”
“I’m listening.”
“The second part of the message is: don’t let us down.”
Luther took a deep breath. “Tell them not to worry,” he said, with more confidence than he really felt. “The guy may leave Southampton, but he’ll never reach New York.”
Imperial Airways had a flying-boat facility just across the estuary from Southampton Docks. Imperial’s mechanics serviced the Clipper, supervised by the Pan American flight engineer. On this trip the engineer was Eddie Deakin.
It was a big job, but they had three days. After discharging its passengers at Berth 108, the Clipper taxied across to Hythe. There, in the water, it was maneuvered onto a dolly; then it was winched up a slipway and towed, looking like a whale balanced on a baby carriage, into the enormous green hangar.
The transatlantic flight was a punishing task for the engines. On the longest leg, from Newfoundland to Ireland, the plane was in the air for nine hours (and on the return journey, against head winds, the same leg took sixteen and a half hours). Hour after hour the fuel flowed, the plugs sparked, the fourteen cylinders in each enormous engine pumped tirelessly up and down, and the fifteen-foot propellers chopped through clouds and rain and gales.
For Eddie that was the romance of engineering. It was wonderful; it was amazing that men could make engines that would work perfectly and precisely, hour after hour. There were so many things that might have gone wrong, so many moving parts that had to be precision-made and meticulously fitted together so that they would not snap, slip, get blocked or simply wear out while they carried